Rashid assumed he was being summoned to somewhere else in Yorkshire. “When he said he was in Stornoway, I had never heard of it.”

After an alarming flight on a tiny twin-propeller plane, he arrived at an unpromising building with rotten timbers and fresh air where the roof tiles should be.

He said: “It was a shell. It looked as if it was about to fall down. I looked at it and assessed it and set a target of £50k to transform it. Then when I realised the cost of materials, skips, the cost of everything really, I needed more money.”

Rashid’s JustGiving page attracted interest and donations from across the UK and the rest of the world.

The total now stands at nearly £100,000. Via social media, Rashid appealed to fellow Muslims to support the new mosque, donate copies of the Koran and send prayers when the carpets were held up at the ferry terminal in Ullapool.

The JustGiving page managed to raise thousands of pounds for the Mosque (Image: Internet Unknown)

His arrival came as a shock to Stornoway, population 8000.

There have been Muslims living in the town since the 1950s, when the first travelling salesman arrived with a suitcase full of fabric. Recently, their numbers have been swollen by a handful of Syrian refugees.

This YouTubing Yorkshireman, however, was something new.

“I turned up and I’m not your typical builder,” Rashid explained. “I was young compared to other builders on the island. The general Muslim community were, ‘Who is this guy?’ They didn’t know I’d built four mosques already and many new houses. They didn’t have confidence in me.”

When they saw him negotiating with suppliers, cutting deals and sending up a team of his own roofers – with Stornoway Mosque Team on their hi-vis jackets – they soon changed their tune.

Members of the Muslim community prayed at the mosque yesterday (Image: Getty Images Europe)

“People started to turn up and work started to happen, then they let me crack on,” Rashid said.

There is a joke on the Outer Hebrides that Gaelic has a word that means the same as the Spanish manana, but without the sense of urgency. Rashid, on the other hand, runs a company called On Time Construction.

His first plan was to get the mosque finished by the end of Ramadan, June 14. Then he pushed for completion before it starts next week. In the end, the building work was finished last week, with just the special carpets being fitted on Wednesday before the grand opening. “It’s the fastest mosque in the world,” Rashid said.

It took Rashid just eight weeks to complete the Mosque on the island (Image: Getty Images Europe)

Read More

“People are saying they’ve never seen anyone as young as me, with so much motivation and drive, who has not just built a mosque in eight weeks but changed 80 per cent of the island’s opinion about Muslims and Islam.

“I tried to be real to people. I explained that if you just show love and be good to your neighbour, whoever they are, it’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

Locals have popped in to help with decorating and bringing donations of cash. A few want to learn more about Islam. Folk who gave Rashid the cold shoulder two months ago now greet him like an old friend.

“At the beginning, I would say hello and people wouldn’t say hello back to me. There were some who wouldn’t even look at me.

“Now the last time I was walking through the town, I was getting hugs from everybody. That makes me very happy. People are saying, ‘You’re one of us’. It felt good.”

Most religious leaders are pleased that Lewis’s Muslims will have a place of worship. Only Reverend Graeme Craig, minister of the Free Church Continuing in Stornoway, is opposed to the new building.

He said: “I’m saddened because Islam is a false religion which is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity. Those who follow any false religion are in spiritual danger of their souls being lost.”

He stressed that he opposed all “false” religions, not just Islam, and that he was “very much against the persecution of anyone”.

The completion of the mosque means it is now the UK's most northerly one (Image: Getty Images Europe)

Rev Craig was not at yesterday’s opening but Rashid said: “I invited everybody. They are all most welcome. I asked a few priests to come along but they have said no. It’s nothing against the mosque. They don’t want to get backlash from the minority.”

And Rashid was thrilled with the turnout, including several carloads of people coming up from Yorkshire for the occasion.

He said: “It’s been very positive. A lot of people are happy in the community.”

Muhammad Khalid Murray, a Muslim convert who lived in Stornoway in the 1990s, came back to the island to say a few words at the opening. He said: “The Muslim community in Lewis are very quiet, they just get on with their thing. Now they have an actual mosque, an actual presence there after all these years.”

Rashid said: “At the start of the year, the community thought they would be reading their prayers with a hard hat on. They weren’t even thinking to have a mosque for a good few years.

“Now they have got this little mosque, which is literally the size of someone’s living room.”